Blogs

About this blog

This blog contains posts that share five interesting facts about one of IBM's products or services. This blog is brought to you by IBM Redbooks and is maintained by Martin Keen (@MartinRTP) and James Pistilli.

Links

Tags

Recent tweets

5 Things To Know About Linux on System z

IBM System z is the flagship family of mainframe computers that forms the core of IT infrastructures used worldwide by businesses in many different industries. Virtualization on System z offers industry-leading and large-scale proven Cloud and IT optimization capabilities to drive down the costs of managing and maintaining the tremendous proliferation of servers in today's technology infrastructures.

Linux is a popular operating system used to run applications on many different types of computer systems ranging from personal computers to super computers. Put Linux on System z and you have servers that can do more with less, providing IT organizations a robust and effective workload deployment platform for consolidation, to eliminate server sprawl and complexity, as well as re-deployment and new workload deployment.

Here are five things to know about Linux on System z:

1. Virtualization

The virtual machine environment is highly flexible and adaptable. New Linux guests can be added to a VM system quickly and easily without requiring dedicated resources. This is useful for replicating servers in addition to giving users a highly flexible test environment.

2. Server hardware consolidation.

Running tens or hundreds of Linux instances on a single System z server offers savings in space and personnel required to manage real hardware.

3. Starting with z/VM 6.2, continuous operations

With z/VM 6.2, a hosting environment can be set up to provide continuous operation of your Linux guest systems. Unlike a distributed system or Linux host based implementations, disruptive service can be performed on the hardware processor and host operating system while providing for continuous operation of your Linux guests.

4. System z advantages

Running Linux on System z means the Linux guest(s) can transparently take advantage of VM support for System z hardware architecture and RAS features.

5. Nearly perfect Linux workload management

Utilize available platform resources to the max while ensuring that high-priority workloads are being processed ahead of lower-priority ones without degradation of CPU utilization, throughput or response time.

Lydia Parziale is an IBM Redbooks Project Leader. She works with teams of international technical experts from around the world to explore various technologies and their integrations and writes books, guides, blogs and videos on what they find. Follow Lydia on Twitter at @LydiaP01.